With the frenzy over raffles, and the $500,000,000 MM jackpots that never happened despite the hype about California joining making it possible, what if there was a jackpot game that was conducted like a raffle- no draw until all the thiclets are sold?

In this case all the tickets would mean all the combinations.

Granted, no seasoned lotto player is going to play 1 2 3 4 5 6, but some people would play that just to get a drawing conducted.

The jackpot would build until all the tickets (combinations) were sold and as in raffles, there would have to be a winner.

This would probably be a lot easier to do with a state Pick 6 jackpot game then a muilt-state Pick 5 + 1.

What do you say, would you play it?

Ticket prices remain at $1.

Those who run the lotteries love it when players look for consistency in something that's designed not to have any.

There is one and only one 'proven' system, and that is to book the action. No matter the game, let the players pick their own losers.

There are major problems with not having a drawing for a typical jackpot game until every single combination has been sold. The main one is how difficult it would be to sell all of the combinations. The frenzy over raffles is produced by the perception that the odds are better and the fear of not getting a ticket while they're available, and that won't exist for the game you suggest.

I can promise you that plenty of people play 1 2 3 4 5 6 for every drawing (I had a coworker who was one of them), just like plenty of people play diagonal patterns. Those "seasoned lotto players" don't play it because they think it's too unlikely to be drawn. Other people play it is because they think nobody else would choose it and/or they think it's a special number that is more likely to be drawn. Both groups are wrong.

The combinations that wouldn't sell would be the ones that nobody plays simply because of probability. As a group, people don't pick combinations randomly, but to simplify things let's imagine that perfectly random QP's were the only choice. Let's also pretend that the first 90% of combinations are sold with out a single repeat. At that point, 9 of every 10 tickets sold can be expected to be repeats of a combination that has already been played. For MM that means you'd have to sell roughly 175 million tickets to cover most of the 17.5 million remaining combinations. When 99% of the combinations were sold it would take another 175 million tickets to get most of the 1.75 million that still hadn' been played. Sell those and you might have covered 99.9%, and you'd need to sell another 175 million to cover most of the 175 thousand that were still left. In the real world it's unlikely that all of the combinations would be sold without selling at least 10 times as many tickets as there are combinations.

For the $370 million advertised MM jackpot in March they sold about 212 million tickets. To have a realistic chance of selling all combinations they would have to sell more than 5 times as many tickets. Who's going to buy over a billion tickets? How many of the people who didn't play will decide to play if the advertised jackpot is $1 billion? Would you buy 4 or 5 times as many tickets? That's the biggest problem of all. I don't think there's a chance that they could sell enough tickets to use all of the combinations.

Since people don't play randomly in the real world, some combinations would be played more often than random chance would allow. At the same time, the random combinations would start repeating when less than 1% of combinations have been played. By the time all of the combinations had been played at least once some of them would have been played 100 times or more (ignoring the relatively few combinations that are always played by large numbers of people). The good news is that the jackpot would be truly huge. It's unlikely that it would be less than $500 million cash for MM , and a very good chance it would be $700 or more. The bad news is that there would be only one single combination that could be an only winner. The most likely outcomes of the drawing would split the jackpot between multiple winners, resulting in actual prizes that are no bigger than what we see as a matter of routine. For a few combinations the actual prize could be smaller than the 2nd place prize.

If such a game did exist I'd have to assume that the average number of repeats for any given combination would be about 10, so for an advertised jackpot of even $1 billion I'd be expecting the winners to each get perhpas $50 million cash, with a fair chance that it would be less than half that much. For a $20 to $50 million cash jackpot in MM I'll spend a buck or two. That means you're going to need to break into your piggy bank to buy all those other tickets that have to be sold.

With the frenzy over raffles, and the $500,000,000 MM jackpots that never happened despite the hype about California joining making it possible, what if there was a jackpot game that was conducted like a raffle- no draw until all the thiclets are sold?

In this case all the tickets would mean all the combinations.

Granted, no seasoned lotto player is going to play 1 2 3 4 5 6, but some people would play that just to get a drawing conducted.

The jackpot would build until all the tickets (combinations) were sold and as in raffles, there would have to be a winner.

This would probably be a lot easier to do with a state Pick 6 jackpot game then a muilt-state Pick 5 + 1.

What do you say, would you play it?

Ticket prices remain at $1.

Ohio didn't sell out its 650,000 raffle tickets at $20 a pop in six weeks, but between March 2 and March 6 when the Mega Millions jackpot was estimated at $370 million, Ohio sold $15.1 million tickets. The players may have viewed that draw as a "must win raffle" with top prizes of $100 million with more and higher secondary prizes. Nation wide, Mega Millions sold almost 213 million tickets but if that 70% QP figure is true and no duplicate QPs were sold, they still would be short of selling out all possible combinations.

Basically you're proposing a raffle with 175 million combos where the players can choose any combo. The website might include a count-down meter "Only 125 million combos left", but there would be no reason for players to buy more tickets and the jackpot hunters would be waiting for that number to get much lower. The game might fly but it would probably take months to sell out all the combos.

"This would probably be a lot easier to do with a state Pick 6 jackpot game then a muilt-state Pick 5 + 1."

A state could have a 6/49 lotto and declare when the jackpot reached say $15 million, it would become a "must win" jackpot and if nobody matches all 6 winning numbers, the jackpot amount will be divided among the secondary prize winners. They did that with the last Lot' O Play drawing and tickets sales for that draw were 2 or 3 times higher.

I believe that some race tracks have a "must win" win jackpot when their Pick 6 reaches a certain level or a number of cards without a win.

"What do you say, would you play it?"

I only played Lot' O Play once before the final drawing and played last one so yes I would play that type of a game.

"...The combinations that wouldn't sell would be the ones that nobody plays simply because of probability. As a group, people don't pick combinations randomly..."

In essence though, when soemone buys a raffle ticket, aren't they just taking the next number for sale?

So it would be the same in this game. I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm just saying W"hat if?"

If people started seeing a $400,000,000 and beyond jackpot it would stir up a whole lot of interest, and attract first time, and only time, players.

It sounds to me like you're now describing a game that works differently than the one in your first post. When somebody buys a raffle they get the next available number because the game is designed to be sold sequentially. They don't get to choose the number, it isn't random, and I doubt that most people see the ticket number as a combination. FWIW, while they aren't promoted as such, scratchers work the same way, except that the tickets arent sold sequentially and if all of the tickets don't sell some of the prizes may not be awarded.

As Stack suggested, it now sounds like you're simply talking about a raffle with 175 million tickets to sell (or less for a smaller 6 of n game, with a correspondingly smaller jackpot). If that's the case the jackpot would be about $100 million as an annuity, or $56 million cash, assuming the same percentage of sales goes to the jackpot. Advertised jackpots of $100 milion typically sell 30 to 35 million tickets. Guaranteeing that the jackpot would go to a single winner and having more than 3 or 4 days to sell the tickets might boost sales substantailly, but there's not a chance it will sell more than 5 times as many tickets.

The March MM jackpot cleary shows that even as an annuity, a jackpot of close to $400 million stirs up a lot of interest. I'm sure there were some first time buyers (every drawing has them, but the bigs ones certainly get more), but they still only sold 20% more tickets than there are combinations. You could also ask what if pigs could fly, but it's not at all likely to happen.

Actually I as thinking kind of a combination of both a regualr jackpot game- people playing their numbers and QPs - but there's no drawing until all combinations are sold so there would have to be a winner.

Then see my first post. The game you're describing is essentially unworkable.

There are only three ways for the lottery to raise jackpots while keeping ticket prices the same. They can: 1.make the games harder to win (there's a reasonable argument that this is effectively an increase in the cost of playing), 2. reduce lower tier prizes to put more in the jackpot pool, or 3. keep less for themselves. We know that option 3 isn't likely, so pick your poison.